


A Friend... Maybe

by orphan_account



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Gen, No romo, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-08 05:17:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19864126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Oliver Queen came home with a mission.This time, he brought a friend.





	A Friend... Maybe

**Author's Note:**

> HEADS-UP!!!  
> Ronnie is NOT named after Firestorm. That was a mistake, but I like the name Ronnie/Ronda, at least for a girl. So, she is in NO WAY named after him. She's her own person.  
> Made up person.
> 
> Whatever.

Ronnie Newton was not a very normal person.

  
She was fully aware of this fact, just like she was fully aware that she had believed that Oliver Queen had died four times, and the fact that every time he came back to life, it wasn’t a giant revelation. It was more of a “Happy-You-Didn’t-Die-I-Didn’t-Miss-You-Much” thing. She desensitized pretty easily. She wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

She had also never been to America. It wasn’t a weird thing, she knew. Plenty of people hadn’t been to America. She was from Canada. Alberta. So, she had never been to America before Oliver came back from a thing in Russia, and informed her that he was going home, so she was too.

The problem with this was that Ronnie didn’t exactly know how a normal person should act. She did her best to follow Oliver’s lead, along with remembering Yao Fei, Shado, Slade, Sara, the other prisoners of the Amazo, everyone in Hong Kong, the prisoners of the stupid magic year, and the Russian’s, although she had only spent time with the Bratva, and their idea of a good time was making bombs, shooting at each other, and drinking heavily. Together, this didn’t exactly form a great idea of normality.

  
She respected that Oliver would much rather that no one knew what happened to them on the island, and during the boat ride, the airplane (She didn’t like them much.) and the airports, they mostly conversed in a mix of English, Spanish, Russian, Cantonese, and Mandarin, about what their story was.

She liked the story the ended with. Don’t talk much, avoid questions, be cryptic. Ronnie liked being cryptic, so that was easy.

The Queen Mansion was not so easy. Ronnie immediately took a liking to Oliver’s family, especially his little sister, who was a few years older than Ronnie, who tried to be a role model, but they mostly ended up trying to be each other’s shoulder angels.

Walter was fascinating to her. She’d never met a man with his accent, and she asked many questions about it. Moira was interesting to her because here was a mother, and

Ronnie had never had a mother. Amanda Waller didn’t count. Shado was more of a “I’m-Going-To-Teach-You-To-Kill” person, but situations happen, and Tatsu was probably the closest, but she was a lot like Shado, not in the sense that she had a “Get-Out-Of-My-Life-Oliver” attitude, but the “I-Will-Kill-Anyone-Who-Hurts-My-Family” attitude. She was a cool mom, who actually liked Ronnie, and taught her things. Laundry, cooking, languages, geography, sword care. She also taught Ronnie about how you can yell at Oliver and that’s fine because you’re mad at him.

Raisa was interesting too. Oliver seemed to like her, and since Moira knew that Oliver hadn’t taken Russian in college, the story became that Ronnie learned Russian thanks to a friend when she was little and had taught Oliver it as something to do. Ronnie enjoyed having conversations with the sweet woman, practicing her Russian.

Ronnie did not like school, and after a week of it, it was decided that Ronnie would not be attending a public or private school. She would have a tutor, who would come every week, teach her things, give her work to do, and go over what Ronnie did the week before. It was much better. But not by much.

  
\---

“Hey, Oliver.” Ronnie raps her knuckles on his door and opens it. He’s reading a book on the couch, something she did not expect. Stories were more Ronnie’s thing, and she often had pinned for people to tell her them, or make them up, because she loved books and things so much. Oliver had not been a fan of this hobby. “What you doing?”

“Reading Harry Potter.”

“Cool.” Ronnie says, and sits down next to him. She’s short. Red hair cut only long enough to tuck behind her ears, wearing shorts and a t-shirt she got from Thea, with flowers printed on it in blue and green. “What book is that?”

“The first one."

“Oh, super-boring then.” She teases, crossing her legs up on the couch. “What are you doing tonight? And don’t say sleeping, because that’s obvious. Everyone needs sleep. Wait. Why does everyone need sleep?”

Oliver, quite used to the fourteen-year-olds questions, stays focused on his book. He knows that she often asks them, and then will cut herself off halfway, having figured out the answer, or will finish, having figured out the answer as well. Accidentally rhetorical. Or so she said. “I don’t know. Maybe you should ask Mom, or Walter.”

“I think that’s a good idea. So. What’cha doing?” She pokes him with one finger in the kneecap. “Look at me while I talk to you. Unless you happen to be multitasking. Which you clearly are. Ignore that. Not the question. Answer the question.”

“You know what I’m doing.”

“Cool.” Ronnie nods, and switches to Mandarin. “Killing people?”

He looks up at her, slightly irritated. He knows that to her, killing people is just something you do. It’s not a crime, it’s like a hobby. Like how someone collects postcards. He also knows that the reason she views it like this is because of how she grew up. Amanda Waller, Slade, Shado, Yao Fei, Tatsu, Maseo, Ivo, Anatoly, and the magic year were not great role models. Especially Amanda. So, he doesn’t blame her, because he knows that she knows it’s not normal to view it like she does. He answers in the same language.

“No.”

“Boring.” She repeats, pointing at him accusingly. She’s still speaking Mandarin. “I get to watch a movie with your sister.”

"What movie?” He asks in English.

“No godly idea!” She sings, now in English. That’s another thing about her. She wears people out verbally, mentally, audibly, visually, in conversation, in fights. She’s tiring. And also, possibly ADHD, but that’s still unconfirmed. “Something about superheroes maybe. Does Thea like super-hero’s?"

“I think so. It’s been a while."

“Understatement! Maybe a documentary. I was reading about important events in history, since I know nothing, and I found this list of world changing things. What’s 9/11?”  
Oliver, having given up on Harry, Ron and Hermine, puts his book down, and focuses on her. “You probably don’t want to know.”

“There was this guy, and these two towers.” She starts to say. It’s a story. He can tell by her tone. “This was in second grade. We watched a story-video. Anyway, this guy, he walked on tightropes; I dunno if he still does, it would be cool if he does, but anyways, there were these two really tall towers, and they’re gone now, but I can’t remember why, but I don’t think we were told why, and the guy, he had some friends, and the towers were still being built--- I think? And they put a wire between the tower tops, and he walked across it. The Twin Towers. What happened to them?”

Clearly Ronnie doesn’t know that 9/11 was the destruction of the Twin Towers. Oliver smiles at her, like he always does. She’s usually bubbly and bright. She’s sort of innocent, although he knows she doesn’t like to be referred to like that. “Maybe you should ask Walter."

“You don’t want to tell me, because it’s bad, right?"

“Something like that.”

“That’s OK.”

Another thing Oliver liked about Ronnie. She forgives really quick. She forgave him for Shado, Slade, Sara, the Hong Kong thing, although she was furious that they couldn’t save her best friend Akio, forgave him for pretending to kill the Russian woman, (Ronnie sucks with names; she spent a week calling Tommy ‘Loud Person Friend’.) killing the Russian woman’s brother, killing the Russian woman, torturing the Russian woman’s fellow prisoner, and forgave him for Russia, although he had to bribe her with some cooked rabbit when they landed on Lian Yu again. She’d forgiven him for that too.

“I’ll ask Thea maybe.” Ronnie muses. “Hey, does Thea speak anything other than English? French, Spanish, Mandarin, Russian, Cantonese?”

“Not that I’m aware of.” Oliver sighs. Ronnie tilts her head at him.

“Are you sick of me?”

“No.” He answers tiresomely. She’s worn him out completely.

“Yeah. You are. You go back to Harry staring at himself in the mirror with his dead parents. Spoilers, since you read slow. I’mma go find Walter; he came home early.”

“Mm-hmm.” Oliver agrees, and with that, she’s gone.

He really does like Ronnie. She’s slightly nuts, talks fast, bounces around subjects like wildfire, and doesn’t exactly have the best judgement when it comes to life experience and the like, but she’s cheerful, something that drove Slade nuts.

Not liking Ronnie is like not liking puppies or kittens, chocolate or gummy bears, sunsets and the stars. It just doesn’t happen. Everyone likes her. Except for maybe Quintin, who seems apprehensive.

“Walter?” Ronnie calls, as she wanders around the mansion. She doesn’t have any living family, so Moira offered for her to live with them, and she agreed, stating quite plainly that “I don’t trust Oliver not to get himself killed, and where else am I going to go, everyone else in my family is dead.”

“Mr. Walter is in a meeting.” Raisa offers from nearby, where she’s arranging flowers. Ronnie wanders over, and picks up a small pink and orange rose, giving it a sniff.

“Raisa, what was 9/11?”

**Author's Note:**

> So, Oliver is clearly more relaxed. (I think? No idea how other people perceive things.)  
> Ronnie tagged along with him for the five years, despite how you might interpret this. She did, although she cheerfully complained the entire time.  
> Ronnie's sort of a 'I-Don't-Care-What-You-Think' person, but I assure you that she is self-aware, but she likes acting like this.


End file.
